1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, an image forming system and a method for retrieving a sheet profile.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, in image forming apparatuses that perform electrophotographic image formation, a developing device for developing an electrostatic latent image formed on a photoconductor drum serving as an image bearing member is provided. The developing device contains toner, and applies the toner from the developing sleeve toward the photoconductor drum at the time of development to visualize an electrostatic latent image on the photoconductor drum as a toner image.
The charging amount of the toner in the developing device changes depending on the environment (such as temperature and humidity). For example, the charging amount of toner particles tends to decrease when the humidity around the device is high. When the charging amount of toner particles is changed, the density and the quality of the output image are also changed in accordance with the change of the charging amount of toner particles.
Therefore, it has been proposed to perform image formation such that sheet profiles are registered in advance in coordination with environment information such as temperature and humidity, and the user selects the sheet profile corresponding to the current environment information from among the registered sheet profiles, and, the image formation condition (for example, the charging potential of the photoconductor drum) of the selected sheet profile is used for the image formation.
For example, Japanese patent application No. 2013-125786 discloses a technique in which a plurality of setting values in accordance with the environment (such as high temperature and low temperature) are assigned to an item (for example, transfer potential) of one sheet profile, and thus the setting value can be automatically switched even when the environment is changed as long as the setting value according to the changed environment is assigned.
However, with the technique disclosed in Japanese patent application No. 2013-125786, a sheet profile assigned with the setting value in accordance with the environment, and a sheet profile which is not assigned with the setting value may possibly registered. These sheet profiles only differ in assignment of the setting value, and therefore are similar to each other. The number of such similar sheet profiles tends to increase in accordance with the use period, the use frequency, the number of users and the like.
Accordingly, when selecting the sheet profiles, the user has to take care of not mistakenly select a similar sheet profile. As such, the task of selecting the sheet profiles has been complicated.